


a tiny prayer to father time

by nicheinhischest



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 318 spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicheinhischest/pseuds/nicheinhischest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles was too young to be that cynical. Twelve years old, and completely fucking jaded, but Scott had held his hand through it all, because Stiles has always been his best friend and that’s what best friend’s <i>do</i>. They keep you safe. They pick you back up. </p><p>They don’t let you waste away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a tiny prayer to father time

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for S03E18. I don't know guys. I'm pretty sure none of this makes sense. I just love Stiles & Scott so much and I need to go cry into some more food about this *ollies into space on a skateboard made of tears*
> 
> (Title is from Death Cab for Cutie's "[What Sarah Said](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQuVudn1-RE)". Warnings for discussion of death.)

Claudia gets sick when Stiles is nine.

Scott doesn’t really understand it at the time, just knows that there’s something inky black inside her chest blotting out the beats of her heart with every month that passes. Scott and Stiles are nine, and they have never seen someone’s body betray them to the point of no return like Claudia’s.

She looks so different, at the end. Just skin and bones and sickness and all the things that make her an extension of her IV bag, of her hospital bed, of her disease instead of the _person_ she used to be.

*

A few weeks after Stiles’ twelfth birthday, he’s squashed in an uncomfortable hospital chair with Scott, pushed right up against Claudia’s bed. (Melissa has a late shift that night, and Scott keeps Stiles company sometimes, when Stiles’ dad has to work.) 

Tonight’s different, though. Tonight, Scott sits with his knobbly knees pulled up to his chest and teeth worrying at his bottom lip, watching Stiles stretching, extending his arms onto the bed and whispering _Mom_ and Scott knows, he _knows_ this is it.

Stiles says, "Mom, _please_ ," and he sounds too broken for twelve years old, too broken for a whole _lifetime_ as Claudia looks at him with unfocused, watery eyes. She moves her hand - sluggish, from meds, from the debilitating way her limbs have given up on her - and cups his cheek, smiles slow and close-mouthed and _beautiful_ and she’s dying and Stiles is gasping for air like he’s having one of Scott’s asthma attacks, and he can’t breathe, can’t do anything but cry.

So Scott runs.

He runs out into the hall to get his mother because she’ll fix it, she fixes everything, and he swipes a tiny fist across his face to wipe away tears and he’s talking to every nurse he knows, where is she, _whereismymomsomeonehelp_ and Stiles is twelve when Claudia leaves him he is _twelve years old_ and he doesn’t have a mother anymore and eventually

Eventually Melissa runs into the room right behind the doctors, and it’s all Scott can do to curl up back in the hospital chair with his best friend in the whole world and hug him until he swears he is pouring the oxygen back into Stiles’ lungs himself and

And watching someone die changes the very depths of who you are as a person. Alters something inside your brainbodysoul - alters what makes you _you_. Holding on as they stop breathing, as their vital organs shut down one by one, as their eyes go flat - the eyes, that carry so much _life_ \- 

You don’t come out of that the same.

(Stiles turns sharp like the edge of a blade after Claudia's death and his words - sardonic and designed to cut, now - sound mocking to anyone who isn’t Scott. He’s a twelve year old with a bitter, twisted mouth, because if everyone is too busy trying to figure out if he’s insulted them or not, they won’t see the way it trembles when he speaks.)

*

Scott doesn’t much remember who Stiles was before he lost Claudia, but he wishes he did. He knows there’s a place in Stiles that can never forget to the last, shaking inhale what she looked like as she left this world, that can never forget what it was like to feel her hand slip from his face and fall back down onto the bed like she was nothing more than a rag doll.

But Scott wishes he could.

Stiles was too young to be that cynical. Twelve years old, and completely fucking jaded, but Scott had held his hand through it all, because Stiles has always been his best friend and that’s what best friend’s _do_. They keep you safe. They pick you back up. 

They don’t let you waste away.

Scott rests his forehead against his knees like he did when he was a kidkid and breathes out shakily. He doesn’t know whose hand to hold now, when everything feels so wrong. Doesn’t know how to open his mouth and make promises he’s not sure he can keep without feeling like curling in on himself and blocking out the world because if Stiles - if Stiles is sick then -

“Sweetheart?”

Scott opens his eyes. Melissa is standing in front of him.

He’s sitting in the hallway outside of the MRI room, waiting to be called in. The Sheriff is with Stiles’ doctor, fuck, his _neurologist_ \- Scott’s eyes sting, and he blinks quickly to compose himself, looks up at his mom. 

She reaches out and cups his chin, thumb skimming his cheek. Tries to smile.

Scott can see the way her eyes are red-rimmed, but he doesn’t comment on it. 

“What?” he asks, and his voice comes out hoarse, like he hasn’t spoken in weeks. 

Melissa shakes her head, opens her mouth to speak and Scott _just_ catches the way her chin quivers before she controls it. 

She says, “It’s just an MRI.”

She says, “He’ll be fine,” and Scott doesn’t bother reminding her that he’s got a built in lie detector now.

“You know what it is,” he murmurs, and it’s not a question. 

She answers anyway.

“Yeah, hon, I do.”

Scott’s vision swims, but he refuses to blink this time. Melissa sits in the chair next to him and rubs his back and Scott asks helplessly, _childishly_ , “Is it my fault?”

“What?” She combs his hair into place and pulls him closer. “What, sweetheart, _no_ -”

“This is because of the stupid - this is because of what we did, I know it. He was fine before we died, fine before -”

He doesn’t say _Before I got bit_ , but his mom must see something in his expression anyway because she stills, and a look of fierce protectiveness flits across her features. 

“You didn’t do this,” she says, and he listens to her heart, ducks his head to hide his face in the crook of her neck and focus on the lulling sounds of life beating beneath her ribcage. “Scott, listen to me: you didn’t do this.”

There’s no blip; Scott curls a hand into the sleeve of her scrub and says, “Ma, what if it’s something they can’t fix?”

“Then we’ll find a way,” she says, quiet, careful. She’s tiptoeing around _something_ about Stiles, Scott doesn’t know what, exactly, but she keeps rubbing soothing circles against his back until he tells himself to ignore it. 

“Right?” she asks, swaying a little from side to side in a way that has Scott closing his eyes and taking what feels like his first full breath in all day.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, we’ll find a way. We always find a way.”

*

Scott doesn’t realizes he’s shaking in the MRI room until Stiles reaches out for him, or maybe they reach for each other, meeting in the middle like they always do. Scott bear hugs him, and Stiles clutches at his shirt, chokes down a dry sob at his shoulder. Scott can smell the fear on him, the absolute _terror_ at the unknown and he can’t fix this with a handhold anymore, but he’ll do whatever he can, whatever it fucking takes to keep Stiles here with him. Stiles’ chest hitches and Scott murmurs, "It’s okay, it’s okay, I swear to _God_ , it’ll be okay."

Stiles says, "What’s wrong with me," and it sounds just as broken as it did when he was sitting in front of a hospital bed watching his mother waste away. Scott can feel the Sheriff and his mother watching from beyond the glass, can feel the hesitant way the neurologist is giving them just enough time to recover. He’s in between Stiles’ legs still and he palms Stiles’ nape, digs blunt nails into the skin there, and this hurts _so fucking much_ because if he tries, he thinks he can smell the sickness on Stiles, smell something off and foreign and _toxic_.

Scott wants to say _I’m sorry_ , because even if his mom said it wasn’t his fault, it sort of feels like it is - sort of feels like they wouldn’t even be here right now if they’d stayed at home that night, when they were fifteen and stupid, or if Scott had figured out another way to find their parents - or if Scott had just rejected the bite and died instead -

Then Stiles mumbles, “I love you, dude,” and Scott gives a shaking exhale. 

“I know,” he answers, and.

And before Allison, before _pack_ , before werewolves and hunters and things that go bump in the night, before asshole fathers and mothers taken away too soon, it has always been Stiles and Scott. 

Always.

Attached at the hip, partners in crime, peas in a pod. So many useless idioms to describe the nature of _them_ , and they all pale in comparison to the truth:

Aside from Melissa, Stiles is the first person Scott’s ever trusted with his whole heart, the first person he knew he’d fight for, die for, _live_ for. And he knows he’s that person for Stiles. Because they were two kids growing up in single-parent homes for entirely different reasons, two kids stumbling to find themselves, to find where they fit in - two kids who filled in the nooks and crannies of each other, the empty little spaces where things get bent and broken.

Stiles sniffs, rubs his face back and forth into Scott’s shoulder. Then he lifts his head. 

“Did you just -” He sniffs again, and he still sounds so broken down and scared, but his shoulders lose the slightest amount of tension and he asks, bemused, “Did you just quote _The Empire Strikes Back_ at me?”

“I could’ve done the Chewbacca yell,” Scott says thickly, “but it didn’t feel appropriate.”

Stiles just _stares_ for a moment. 

His shocked laughter bleeds into a crumpled, tearful expression a beat after, and he tugs Scott in again, hugs him even harder this time. 

“I’ll do something, Stiles,” Scott tells him again, and closes his eyes. “I promise.”

(This is friendship, pure and simple, and fact of the matter is, sometimes you find one person - if you’re lucky, you’ll find _one_ \- and you know, you _know_ you’ll spend the rest of your whole fucking life grateful to whatever deity, whatever force of will, force of fate, force of _complete and utter chance_ it was that brought you two together. 

And Scott will never, ever let him go.)


End file.
